


Trust

by QueenOfALotOfDifferentWorlds



Series: What if? [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 'the bathroom scene' gone different, AU, Angst, Draco changing sides, Draco's last hope, Felix Felicis, Harry beging a hero, Hogwarts Sixth Year, Lot's of it, POV Draco Malfoy, Sarcasm, This might be a enemies to friends to lovers, but let's be honest from every other POV it must look like the boy is insane, but let's not get ahead of ourselves, not sure how specifically different, right now just a few details, we are working on the 'friends-thing' for now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-09-14 17:59:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16917618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfALotOfDifferentWorlds/pseuds/QueenOfALotOfDifferentWorlds
Summary: So apparently writing fanfic is a drug and I'm now an addict, so please enjoy while I go mad :)I have no idea how long this is going to be, but I think it will be a collective of Drabbles. As I'm currently starting to write my Bachelor Thesis, I can't promise how often I will update this, but probably a lot more often than I should...Have fun reading!





	1. Trusting Potter is probably the worst thing  imaginably

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently writing fanfic is a drug and I'm now an addict, so please enjoy while I go mad :) 
> 
> I have no idea how long this is going to be, but I think it will be a collective of Drabbles. As I'm currently starting to write my Bachelor Thesis, I can't promise how often I will update this, but probably a lot more often than I should... 
> 
> Have fun reading!

Draco was a smart young man. What was he saying? He was brilliant. Even if his brain was two seconds from dripping out of his ears – and this was going to happen any minute now.

They were still holding hands. It had started when Draco had taken Potters hand and since then nothing had happened. This could be not disastrous if he would take his hand back immediately. He didn’t. Scarhead’s hand was warm and smooth and standing so close, it felt like the cursed luck of the boy who lived – which in all honesty, he had always thought to be the most stupid of Saint Potter’s titles – would rub off on him. Not that he wanted anything of Potter rubbing off on him. 

He just opened his mouth to tell the idiot in front of him that right about now was the perfect time to bloody do something, when he saw the sparkle in the green eyes. There was a frown on his face and he bit his lower lip like he did sometimes when he was thinking. Draco only knew that because it was such a rarity for the bloody hero to have any thought whatsoever. If it wasn’t for his insufferable know-it-all-I’d-rather-die-than-shutting-up-girlfriend he would have probably have died first year, tripping over his own feet. 

Draco was still gazing in Potter’s eyes when he finally snapped out of it. If he wanted to take advantage of this situation – and he wanted to, he needed to – he had to act fast. 

“We should go and see Dumbledore.” 

Draco froze. Had he misread the situation? Was this the way of Felix Felicis to get him to Dumbledore so he could murder him? And Potter too? Take revenge and finish a task the Dark Lord himself hadn’t been able to? Granted, in an open duel he had nothing on the old wizard, but he was spiked with Felix. If he ever had a chance to kill him it was now, led by the Golden Boy. Maybe the potion had just needed a little time to kick in. Maybe… 

“No.” The word was out of his mouth before he could stop it. This was his death sentence. This was the death sentence of his mother. It hadn’t looked good for him since his father had been a failure last summer, but he had had a slim chance of survival. Not anymore. 

Potter looked uncomprehending at him, as if he had never heard someone objecting to him. As if the world itself should bow down to his decisions. As if…  
“Dumbledore can help you!” Conviction and hope spoke out of his voice. Two luxuries Draco didn’t have.

“No. He can’t.” The dread settling back in his guts was ice cold while fire raced through his blood, screaming that he needed to fight, but his muscles were frozen in place. Was this Felix punishing him?

“I promise you, Malfoy, Dumbledore can help you. I will make sure of it.” The last words were whispered with a dark turn to them, as if there was potentially more to the golden Gryffindor and as if anyone actually cared for what he said.

“But he won’t.” And Potter wouldn’t help. Not when he learned what Draco had done. Because, as probably the cursed luck potion whispered loudly in Draco’s mind, he had nearly killed the Weasel. Not that he cared about it, but Potter probably would. He loved his Weasel.

“Why wouldn’t he?” Potter asked and Draco focused back on the man in front of him. Boy! He had meant to think boy! Potter was nothing more than a scrawny wanna-be-hero and… Draco glanced at Potter’s body, barely recognising his muscles, the firm stance and definitely not feeling the magic radiating off of him. Harry Potter was a boy that people thought to be a legend but was nothing more than a badly dressed… Draco looked back into the green eyes that showed more will and power than he should be able to. 

“Because you are trying to kill him?”

Draco stepped back violently, ripping his hand free in the same motion. Dread and agony burned away anything else. Where his white skin had been in contact with Potter’s caramel one, it felt like he had been badly burned. How could he know? How… But he had always known stuff he wasn’t supposed to, hadn’t he? Potter knew. Potter…

“Malfoy!” Potter stepped closer, his face distorted in a way that had to be a lie. If Potter knew that he was trying to kill Dumbledore, he surely knew about the necklace and about…

“Get away!” Draco stumbled back, hitting the sink with his hip, pressing further back none the less.

“Breath, Malfoy.” Ignoring Draco’s desperate need to flee, Potter stepped closer, grabbing his wrists in strong, unyielding hands. “Breath. In and out.”

The restraining of his hands and the close proximity of the boy he had thought he hated for almost six years should have been enough for Draco to fight back. For one, no one was allowed to tell him what to do – except for the Dark Lord for obvious reasons. And his mother, because same. Although she wouldn’t torture him to death, as long as she never found out who had destroyed that one expensive and ancient teapot twelve years ago. But no one else was allowed to tell him, Draco Malfoy what to do, even if it was to keep breathing. And in any other situation he probably would have stopped to breathe just out of spite. 

Instead – and this too, was only Felix Felicis fault of course – he calmed. The ragged breaths slowed down enough so that he actually got oxygen back in his lungs. His eyes refocused and he looked straight at Harry fucking Potter’s face. The idiot was close enough that he could have bitten him. While contemplating if Draco should in fact bite him – just because he could – Draco realised Potter was talking. Reassuring phrases in a soft voice that Draco had never heard before.

“It’s going to be okay, Malfoy.” There was a pause after this, as if Potter didn’t believe it, but sure enough he spoke again. “Dumbledore probably knows that you are trying to off him.” Fury flashed over his face, but he masked it smoothly back to a friendly smile. That split second had been enough for Draco to stop breathing altogether. Of course this was Potter so he was an idiotic washout, but if it hadn’t been Potter, that feeling creeping up in him would have been fear.

Scarhead smiled at him, realizing that Draco was focused on him again – as he surely thought the whole world should be – and gently removed his hands from Draco’s wrists. “Better?”

Draco didn’t answer. For one, he must be going mad and for the other, he was afraid what Felix Felicis would make him do.

“There is nothing to be embarrassed about,” the idiotic Gryffindor said, sitting back a bit and smiling reassuringly. That was an outrageous lie. There was plenty to be mortified about starting with panicking and ending with sitting in a girl’s bathroom staring at each other.

“I used to have panic attacks frequently. It gets… easier.” There was a flash on Potter’s expressive face before he plastered that smile on it again.

“Why…” Draco started, but there was no good way to finish this question. Why are you telling me this? Why are you not trying to kill me? Why are you so bloody nice? Why are you trying to help me? 

Potter looked at him, as if he was actually waiting for Draco to finish the question. As even the Gryffindor realized that this wasn’t going to happen, he stood up in one elegant movement. Stretching his hand down to Draco, he smiled again that bloody hero-smile that had to be a lie of some sort.

“Come on. I know the way.” 

Draco stared at the hand. He knew very well that at the back of it, Potter had a scar in his dreadful handwriting. Words that he himself had scratched into his skin because he had told the truth. Because he had rather told the truth than backing down. Because he had stupidly refused to play by the new rules. Draco looked up at the green eyes that had the same colour as the killing curse, the same intensity and the same amount of raw power. But they were warm where the curse was cold and life where it was death.

How often had he forfeit his life in the last couple minutes? Three times? Four? However often it was, he took Potter’s hand again and let him pull him up. Standing in front of him, still clutching his hand, Draco felt something settle, like the magic of the fucking luck potion was finally satisfied. 

“Why are you doing this?” 

Potter looked to the side, balling his free hand to a fist before relaxing it again. “Everyone should have a choice.” His voice was bitter and desperate, but before Draco could say anything else, the idiot dragged him out of the bathroom.

Frantically scrubbing with his unoccupied hand over his face, Draco tried to rip his hand free, but fucking Potter wouldn’t let go.

“If you don’t want me to cut your hand off, I suggest you let go,” Draco hissed viciously at Potter who didn’t seem to care in the slightest, either for the threat nor the other students who stared gobsmacked at them, when they ran by. Then again, Potter was used to be gossiped about and stared at. Not only was he an attention seeker since fourth year, he was in the paper every other day.

Draco, still trying to rip his hand free, concentrated hard on ignoring the secure feeling he got from being dragged through the whole fucking castle by Potter. At least half of all students had seen them by now and in less than ten minutes everyone would know that Potter and he had held hands. Wait. He felt his ears redden as the implications – that were way worse than him accepting assistant from Potter or Dumbledore – that went with them having physical contact and rushing somewhere hit him. He was dead. Not because the Dark Lord was going to kill him, but because every one of Saint Potter’s little admirers – and Weaselette would be the deadliest of them, he was sure – would try to kill him before he could off himself.

“Let go!” Draco hissed, fuelled by another kind of panic. 

Potter ignored him. Draco was just contemplating to actually cut the asshole’s hand off, when Potter slowed down. He stopped in front of a gargoyle and whispered something to it that Draco couldn’t understand. Maybe the Gryffindor wasn’t as stupid as he looked. 

“Harry?” 

Draco looked up, as did Potter. Granger looked at both of them in utter horror. 

“This is not what you think it is!” Potter squealed, making sure everyone that heard him thought that it was exactly what they thought it was. Draco took everything back. Potter was in fact the stupidest person that ever lived – and kept living for some unknown reason.

Probably more to escape the death glare of Granger than actually to help Draco, Potter dragged them both through the secret passage and up the stairs to the Headmaster’s office. Potter, who it seemed didn’t have to abate the rules of courtesy mere mortals had, didn’t stop to knock on the door, but threw it open and basically ran into it. While being pushed farther into the circular room with many windows and portraits of old sleeping witches and wizards, Draco glanced back out the door and actually saw a bit of bushy brown hair, before Potter pushed the door closed and leaned against it as to keep it that way.

“Harry!” Granger’s voice, enraged and a little higher than usual, pierced through the heavy door.

“Gentlemen.” The voice of Albus Dumbledore made Draco jump before he turned and saw the wizard sitting merrily behind his rather colossal desk, looking cheerfully at the scene in front of him. And why shouldn’t he. His should-be-assassin had been dragged in by his Golden Boy while being hunted by said Golden Boy’s annoying know-it-all-friend. This had to be fucking hilarious for the old nut job. 

“What do I owe this pleasure?” Dumbledore smiled and his blue eyes twinkled in the way Draco always suspected to be a clever lie. Granger choose that very moment to use a spell that propelled the office door open and flung Potter a few steps into the room.

Granger, Draco knew from experience, could be rather physical in expressing her displeasure, so he stepped smartly to the side. He would enjoy watching her tearing Potter a new one. It wasn’t a secret that she had Potter and the Weasel trained.

“May I inquire what the problem seems to be?”

Draco, ignoring for the moment that his demise was imminent, glared at the old man. Couldn’t he have waited a second longer? Seeing Saint Potter being beaten up by the insufferable know-it-all would have almost made all of this worthwhile.

Granger, who apparently for all her book smarts hadn’t noticed the headmaster being in the room, jumped at the voice and looked up. Red tinged her dark cheeks and she involuntary took a step back. “Sir, I am…”

“Sir!” Potter interrupted her, stepping forward to the headmaster’s desk – Draco assumed to get distance between himself and the now mortified looking fury – and lowered his voice dramatically. “I was right.”

Draco’s blood run cold again. Not half an hour had passed since he started talking with Potter and he had had at least two near strokes, three almost heart attacks and one panic attack. This couldn’t be healthy. No wonder Granger and the Weasel looked haunted half of the time. Potter was a danger to everyone around him. More importantly, he was a danger to Draco. He couldn’t see the Gryffindor’s face, but he must be gloating.

“He needs our help. Right now.”

A heavy silence followed in which Granger seemed to deflate and she turned around to look at Draco who tried to not see her face. He failed. Something he was becoming used to. Instead of the expected malicious joy, there was shock on her face, suspicion, curiosity and – worst of all – pity.

Draco was just starting to viciously glare at her when the cool voice of the only wizard the Dark Lord had ever feared cut through the quiet. 

“Miss Granger, if you were so kind as to go back to your studies and, if possible, would refrain from forcing your way into my office from now on.”

Granger’s eyes flew back to the headmaster, before landing on Potter. “Of course, Sir. I’m sorry, I…” She hesitated for one moment, head held high, before she snapped out of whatever she was thinking and retreated with a mumbled apology and closed the door behind her. 

It wasn’t a secret he hated the mudblood. Because he, Draco Malfoy, couldn’t be envious of a muggle born. But right that moment, he wished he could follow her. 

“Mister Malfoy.”

Draco knew he was done for. By now, at least three or four of his housemates would have send word out into the world. Even if he wanted to go back, he couldn’t. There was no way he could back out of this as there hadn’t been a choice for him to accept the Dark Mark or the task that had been given to him. If he wanted to save his mother… If he wanted even a chance of saving his mother, he needed to act now.

He straightened his shoulders and looked into the cold blue eyes of the man who held his and his mother’s life in his old hands. And one of them, Draco and every other student in Hogwarts knew, was unusable because of a curse the fool hadn’t been able to handle.

Potter, useless as he was, stood between them, looking back at Draco with a half-smile on his lips. Didn’t he know how stupid that made him look? Fear and annoyance were squashed when Potter took a step closer to him. 

He looked back into Dumbledore’s eyes, swallowed his pride and opened his mouth. “I need your help, Sir.”


	2. Don’t Worry – as if That is an Option

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco is facing a serious decision - and Potter is not helping. As usual.

When Draco looked back at his life, he knew he had been meant for great things. He came from two very old, mostly pure and almost not inbred families; he had good taste, the best education you could get and he was clever. He had learned eagerly to please his family and his own expectations. His parents had provided him with love, gifts and lessons in every field required to be great.

That went all pear shaped when his father decided to follow a psychotic megalomaniac. In his father’s defence, that megalomaniac with a disquieting fondness of torture had been saying what everyone else thought. Although after being in his service for almost a year now, Draco had started to slightly question his worldview that had seemed logically for so long. Thinking about it, Draco decided that everything must have been pear shaped for all his life, but he simply hadn’t known.

What would he have said, if someone had told him he would one day stand in front of the nutter Albus Dumbledore and ask for help, in the presence of the insufferable Scarhead no less. But that was Harry Potter’s calling wasn’t it? Surviving what shouldn’t be humanly possible to survive and fucking up everything Draco touched.

Dumbledore looked down his long, broken nose and took his sweet time to respond. They weren’t in a hurry or anything. The old man must know that every second they stood there in silence his mother was in danger of being the target of the Dark Lord’s wrath. And the likelihood of that happening, high on every other day, was increasing by the second.

“What seems to be the problem at hand?” Dumbledore leaned back in his chair, an aura of relaxation around him, but Draco wasn’t fooled. He saw the glint in the old man’s eyes and the stiffening of the shoulders. He was taking one moment to contemplate how to start and what he wanted to be done first when Potter, as always, vomited out what must be passing as thinking in his brain. 

“Sir, Voldemort has tasked Malfoy with killing you. Obviously, he isn’t very good at it.”

Draco almost forgot to shiver when he had to squash his immediate need to contradict the Gryffindor. He didn’t want to blurt out that he could have killed the headmaster if he actually wanted to. For one, he wasn’t keen on saying that he didn’t want to kill Dumbledore. Secondly, he wanted his help. He was so wrapped up in keeping his mouth shut – something Potter should learn to do, too – that he almost missed Potter’s next words.

“We have to help him.” 

Dumbledore’s eyes settled on him once more and Draco knew without a doubt that the great leader of the light side would want something in return. For all that Dumbledore had done for Muggleborns and Squibs, he was quite Slytherin in his ways. A praise as much as a warning.

“Am I right to assume you sent the necklace and the poisoned mead?” Dumbledore asked calmly, as if he hadn’t figured that out by now. Draco loathed to think anything positive about the old fool, but everyone who ever read any article written by him had to know he was brilliant – a fucking nutter, but brilliant.

“Yes, sir.” Draco held his head high, trying to fight the blood that wanted to colour his cheeks. How long would the Felix Felicis ‘help’ him. 

“I would have thought you to be more creative in your attempts.” Dumbledore smiled good naturedly at him and Draco had almost turned on his heel. That must be his answer. The damned luck potion was still in action.

“Sir.” Potter stepped closer to the desk, turning his back on Draco. “I promised him that we would help him.” His tone was lower, darker, with a hint of his rebellious blood. Draco knew that tone well. Not that he spared any of his attention on the bloody Saviour when he wasn’t tormenting him.

“I am not sure…” Dumbledore began, but Potter interrupted him.

“Now, Professor.” There was no room for a discussion, no room for disagreeing.

Draco dragged his eyes from Potter’s back to Dumbledore’s face. For just a moment the serenity vanished and something else was visible there, before Dumbledore covered it up with a bright smile.

“Of course, my dear boy.” Dumbledore stood up and walked around his unnecessary large desk. “What do you have in mind?”

Draco noticed that he asked his _dear boy_ this and not him, Draco, who was the person in question. As if he needed any more proof that the old wizard favoured the Gryffindor.

“Mister Malfoy?” The old wizard looked straight at him with those piercing blue eyes that he had thought blind before realizing that the mad genius liked to play the nut job to fool others. In all honesty, he was living the role quite convincingly. 

This was not the time to hesitate or think about his dying social standing while he stood here. Nor was it the time to think about his possible future. For one, he could actually have a future that might not contain torture in it. Granted, that was a very slim chance, but more than he had an hour earlier. It was also not the moment to think about _why_ he had it and _who_ he owed it to.

“My mother.” Draco tasted copper and salt on his tongue. “If you get my mother out and keep us safe, I will…” Draco hesitated. He would what? Dumbledore wanted something in exchange, Draco knew that much, and he would probably be off easy because of the fucking Golden Boy standing between them. So, if he offered him information, that might be enough. He could buy himself out. Get his mother and himself out of the country, trusting in the stupid Gryffindor that he wouldn’t die simply because the universe wouldn’t let that happen. 

He made his gravest mistake yet. He looked in the green eyes of the man that had faced the Dark Lord and had fought back. Draco didn’t know everything. It was forbidden to talk about it, but of course that meant the Death Eaters had talked about how Harry Potter, a fourteen-year-old, had stood up to the most powerful wizard in the world. How he had withstood his Imperius. How he had survived his Cruciatus. And he had fled under his non-existent nose. Draco knew that he had done other stuff. The rumours about Potter and his entourage were colourful and he had believed them full of shit. But in this moment, looking in those bright green eyes, full of pain knowledge a boy his age shouldn’t have and an understanding he would never accept, Draco answered.

“I will join your fight.” In his defence, he told this to Harry Potter and not Albus Dumbledore. Although that might be even worse.

Potter smiled.

It wasn’t the free smile that showed his teeth and took away the lines of pain and dread. He ever only showed that smile to the Weasel, his know-it-all-girlfriend and very few others. Neither was it the sneer full of distaste and schadenfreude that he showed Draco normally. This was something new. There was pain in the smile but also hope and understanding. It was heavy but freeing all the same. 

“Mister Malfoy, I fear we will need a little more… insurance than your word. I believe you are bearing the Dark Mark on your arm?”

Draco’s right hand shot up to his left underarm on which the accursed mark branded him a Death Eater. A follower of the wizard who was too stupid to kill a fucking baby. These things were so fragile you could kill them with very little effort. Throw them out a window, put them in a bath tub or lay them face down on a blanket for fucks sake and he still got himself Avada-Kadavered. 

“What do you suggest… professor?” Draco controlled his feelings with his proper Malfoy upbringing and didn’t glance at the Gryffindor that was so infectious that even looking at him dragged you down to his stupid level.

The old man smiled a reassuring smile that made Draco very nervous. If that smile was any indicator what the old wizard had in mind, he was lucky if it was an Unbreakable.

Draco and Potter were ordered to stay in the Headmaster’s office under the watchful eyes of his Phoenix who either was mad himself or had a terrible taste in human companions as it sat down on Potter’s shoulder the moment Dumbledore had rushed out the door. Presumably to either arrange the saving of his mother or laugh his arse off that the heir to the noble Malfoy House was begging for his help. One of the two. If he was lucky.

The Gryffindor sat down in one of the chairs facing the desk, balancing the bird on his shoulder. He carefully petted its feathers and mumbled something to it.

Draco pointedly ignored the sight as a) it was Potter b) that stupid flammable bird ignored him c) the office was full of stuff he could look at and d) it was fucking Potter.

“Sit down, Malfoy. This may take a while.” Potter’s voice was calm. It was the same calm tone he used on some of his mad followers. It was also the same tone he used when he told his little friends that he, Draco, wasn’t worth fighting with. Which was obviously a lie, so this could be a lie too. But what was the lie? That he was calm? That it could take a while? Or did he know that Dumbledore was out there wasting time just to come back and tell him that it didn’t work?

Potter wouldn’t do that. Draco didn’t think much of the so-called Saviour, and truth be told, no one with more than three brain cells could. Mostly because Potter couldn’t have more than two, but that was beside the point. He wouldn’t do that. For one, Potter had written lines with his own blood just because he wouldn’t quit telling the truth when it would have been in his best interest to do so. Secondly, he put family and friends above everything else and he saved people he didn’t even know just because of the fucking principle. He had _saved_ the little sister of what’s-her-face two years ago in the Triwizard Tournament even though she hadn’t been in danger in the first place. If Potter wanted to use all this against him, he would have done so already. Experience showed that he wasn’t as noble as most people believed, but he couldn’t stand injustice. One of the many reasons it was so much fun to torment him. He probably could not fathom that the world in itself was unjust. 

“What will take a while?” He asked as casually as he could. This was his mother’s life on the line after all. Who could be all casual in a situation like this?

“Whatever Dumbledore will do.” He turned to look at Draco, still balancing the massive Phoenix on his shoulder. That thing had to weigh at least ten kilograms, but the asshole didn’t even seem to notice.

“Don’t worry, he will get your mother out.” He said it with confidence, but Draco had learned to read the Gryffindors expression at least as good as his little friends. It was his calling to torment the git, so of course he had spent quite some time to study him. Potter was worried. It worried Draco that Potter was worried.

There were different ways to approach this. He was a Slytherin after all and didn’t have to blurt out whatever came to his mind first. He could make fun of Potter, provoking a reaction and asking as soon as he was riled up. Or he could tell him to fucking mind his own business. Draco could be worried if he wanted to; this was his mother after all and Potter couldn’t possibly know what he was going through right now. Another option was to throw the last remnants of his dignity out of the window. Of course, that was the option Draco choose.

“And why the fuck shouldn’t I worry? Because _Dumbledore_ is going to risk someone _good_ to save a Death Eater?” Draco spat at the insufferable Gryffindor. “Why the fuck are you even still here? Don’t you have to go to your _friends_ and tell them all about how I fucked up yet again? And while you’re at it you can clarify that we don’t have a _thing_!” 

Potter didn’t take the bait. He even looked puzzled until he seemed to understand the implication and started laughing, the git.

“That’s not what Hermione meant.”

Be that as it may, but that was exactly what everyone else thought right about now.

“And what did she mean then?” Draco hissed, very much annoyed himself now that Potter was still so calm.

Potter’s gaze flicked to the side, as if he needed to think of a convincing lie, but when he looked back, his expression was serious, as if he had made a choice. “Hermione probably thought I finally lost my mind and dragged you to Dumbledore’s office to expose you as a Death Eater.”

Draco stood there quietly, waiting for sensible or at least more information. The Gryffindor didn’t give any.

“That is exactly what happened,” Draco said in an even voice, pretending to be as calm as the clearly mentally challenged scar head was.

The corner of Potter’s mouth twitched, revealing a glimpse of white teeth. “I got you here to help you and that is a totally different matter.” 

Draco started at the other boy, because contrary to former delusions of his, he was, in fact, just a boy. Granted, a boy with an annoying tendency to survive evil megalomaniacs, but still just a boy. And in this moment, Draco might have believed that smile, sad, with a hint of hope and a – in Potter’s case – too small amount of self-deprecation.

“Why are you here, Potter?” Draco’s voice was cold and sharp, a tone he knew well from Lucius. That tone alone could make ministry officials jump. Potter didn’t even blink.

“There were times where I would have needed help and didn’t get it.” He evaded his eyes, staring at one of the book cases, as if seeing whatever hundred situations that might have been.

Draco had to bite his lip to not ask him if he had to butter his own toast one time when none of his fans were at hand. About fifteen minutes ago, the biggest teacher’s pet in Hogwarts had blasted open the Headmaster’s door just to help or possibly stop Potter. When had he ever needed help and hadn’t got it? Dumbledore bent the rules regularly to make life for the damned hero more convenient. If the stories were true, both, the Weasel and the Know-it-All had risked their lives – even if that couldn’t be that much, taking in count who they were – to help and or save the saviour. A fact Draco liked to point out in detail, because if Potter was as great as the dumb believed him to be, why would he need saving?

“I never want to feel that helpless again, and I will never not help a person who feels helpless.” Potter’s voice had changed. It was hard and irrefutable, heat revealing its that statement and resolve. And something else. 

Draco looked at the expression on the face he had thought he hated. Potter’s lips were pressed into a thin line, as if making sure he kept his mouth shut. His eyes, serious and determined, didn’t allow any questioning of what he had just said.

If Draco had known this last year, he would have gleefully constructed a plan to humiliate Potter right down to the bones. Right now, all he could think was: damn you, Felix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, please comment if you like.
> 
> And a lot of things to my lovely beta reader ans friend Anna.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> And as always thank you to my amazing beta reader and friend Anna!


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